I use KDE in large part because it separates the window element/widget design (checkboxes, etc.) from the colors, and lets me control what color everything is -- the defaults that KDE, Xfce, etc. all pick tend to be so low-color & high/low-contrast that they give me headaches. I also generally prefer KDE because of the little useful touches like the easily-added/programmed extra context menu actions in the file manager, integration of KDE-Look, and things like that.

Just want to point out Thunar (the XFCE file manager) also has easily added context menu actions.

I understand the desire for configurability, though. I use Gentoo/Funtoo personally. I have found XFCE to strike a great balance between configurable, stable, and lightweight. I'm not one for flashy, animated windows and effects though. That is in XFCE to a degree.

The last time I used KDE was 3.5(I think), so maybe I should revisit it when 5.0 is out.

Well, I can actually tell quite easily that the 'system settings' window (the one in the back) is the active one. In the taskbar the blue underlining tells you what's active. Plus you can tell since the windows' title is greyed when not active.

Larger areas present easier targets to hit quickly and accurately. This is important with the mouse as well as touch, because making all your UI elements too small makes everything slower to use while you're trying to hit a tiny target.

See also: Fitts' Law.

"Fitts's law (often cited as Fitts' law) is a model of human movement primarily used in human–computer interaction and ergonomics that predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and

I knew something looked buggered about that image, but I couldn't figure out what -- I was too distracted by frustration at the equally user-hostile oversimplified flat outline icons.

What's worse is that it's so awful without even including the planned window decorations, which someone on the team posted to OpenDesktop in April [opendesktop.org]. Imagining the two put together...not pleasant.

....that are not releases. Really wish they would stop that. I went to XFCE with the great "4" announcement. that screwed up everything that I expect a finished window manager to do. Anyway, isn't this a dupe? [slashdot.org]

It's a release candidate, so it's meant for testing and preview purposes, like the developer preview of Android L.

If you label something as a release candidate, what you are saying is "we think this has been completely finished. Everybody check it out, and if we haven't screwed up, we'll rename it as the final version". Hence the name - it's a candidate for release. "Release candidate" is not another name for "preview" or "beta".

This is the kind of crap that gave KDE 4 such a bad reputation. Labelling things as done when they are still major works in progress. If you don't think it's finished, don't call it a release candidate. Don't label it as a new major version. If it's not finished, then it's neither of those things.

This is the kind of crap that gave KDE 4 such a bad reputation. Labelling things as done when they are still major works in progress. If you don't think it's finished, don't call it a release candidate. Don't label it as a new major version. If it's not finished, then it's neither of those things.

That's completely true. The worst part is that it isn't the fault of the KDE developers. Your quote isn't in the release announcement, it's in the writeup on some website that most likely doesn't have any connection to the KDE developers (or, apparently, a clue). The release announcement says, "This is one last chance to test for bugs and check for problems before the final release next week." That is what a release candidate is.

KDE 4.0 was pretty much the same way. The developers proclaimed quite loudly

KDE 4.0 was pretty much the same way. The developers proclaimed quite loudly that it was not meant for everyday desktop use. A few Linux distributions took software that they were clearly told was not ready for end users and gave it to end users.